Dr. Mehmet Oz, acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), has formally notified Tim Walz that every Medicaid billing submission in Minnesota will be audited—and that fraudulent claims will be clawed back and withheld from future federal funding.
In early December 2025, CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz sent a formal letter and issued a public ultimatum to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz regarding the “systemic fraud” in the state’s Medicaid programs, potentially exceeding $1 billion.
Dr. Oz wrote at the time:
“You’ve probably heard the news by now: Minnesota fraudsters stole over $1 billion from Medicaid. And you deserve an explanation.
Our staff at CMS told me they’ve never seen anything like this in Medicaid — and everyone from Gov. Tim Walz on down needs to be investigated, because they’ve been asleep at the wheel. Based on what we know now, this is a clear dereliction of duty.
First, the facts:
In recent years, Minnesota Medicaid launched several new programs, including Housing Stabilization Services, which helped disabled homeless individuals, and Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention, which reimbursed therapy costs for families with autistic children.
Some bad actors in Minnesota’s Somali community decided to game the system. And when they got away with it, they decided to go bigger.
The housing program was supposed to cost $2.6 million dollars annually. Last year, it paid out over $100 million. The autism program ballooned from $3 million in 2018 to nearly $400 million in 2023.
These scammers used stolen taxpayer money to buy flashy cars, purchase overseas real estate, and offer kickbacks to parents who enrolled their kids at fake autism treatment centers. Some of it may have even made its way to the Somalian terrorist group Al-Shebab.
So why didn’t Walz stop them?
That’s simple: because he went all-in on identity politics.
Somalis are a huge voting bloc, and the state’s leaders were afraid that “forcefully tackling this issue might cause political backlash.” That’s not me saying that. It’s a Somali-American fraud investigator who talked to The New York Times.
Somali scammers get rich off the programs Gov. Walz was supposed to be managing. Minnesota politicians get elected with Somali votes and keep the money flowing. This isn’t just fraud: it’s political patronage at public expense.
When Minnesota told CMS about the problem last year, they assured us they’d handle it. By summer, it was obvious they couldn’t — or wouldn’t. So, we stepped in and shut down the worst program: housing. We also froze provider enrollment in a few of the most abused programs.
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